So you've put in thousands of yards in the pool. You've managed your dry lands with the fierce determination of Rocky Balboa. You've maintained your nutrition plan with exacting conscience. You've visualized your race to perfection. You've got your goggles on tight. The gun goes off, and all the tension dissipates as your body and mind finally agree on one thing. It's game day.
You're in the zone. You can feel the searing pang of success. Then all of a sudden, you're underwater. Panic grips as you clamber, desperate to reach the surface for air. And then it hits you. That wasn't the sear of success you were feeling. That was getting kicked in the ribs by another desperate swimmer—broken ribs for sure. Only 140 miles to go........
This is the story of Mark Scribner, age group triathlete, who experienced his worst-case-scenario in the first 10 minutes of Ironman Lake Placid last July. He did, indeed, have two broken ribs, as well as a bruised spleen (though he didn't know all that at the time), from the blow he took during the swim. He still finished the race.
Every athlete has a repertoire of worst-case-scenario-realities. Says Mark, “You know little or big things will appear, it's your mind-set that will determine the outcome.”
So what do you do when the perfection you visualized is thrown to the wind during a race? Mark says the key for him was in his training. “Largely you have the chance through many training sessions where things will not go according to plan, (lost gel, bike issues), etc. Like all aspects of being prepared for actual race day, you have to be aware that you have to practice this aspect of your training in addition to all the other things.”
Karen Atkinson, of Boston LANES, is a big fan of having her swimmers write up their own “Worst Case Scenario Survival Guide”, so that they have the tools to overcome whatever circumstances arise on race day.
For Mark, all the mental preparation from those things that went off-track during training gave him something from which to draw when the unthinkable happened. “All I had to do was to break the problem down into a much smaller, manageable task rather than make it a global issue that could overwhelm me. As I did that, I was able to channel the pain away from my body and into the task at hand: swim, bike and marathon. I stopped myself from thinking too far down the road, I just lasered into swim stroke, bike cadence and the fundamentals. I was living in the now. As the race progressed, I found myself getting stronger mentally. 'The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step' (ancient proverb).”
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